In compensating for the insane overpoweredness of earlier games they went too far in the other direction. Why they singled out Magic to nerf when Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting are all just as stupid broken as prior games remains a mystery.

So one question I have, is there any decent destruction spells out there past the general fireball/ice shard ones? I have a feeling I'm missing out on a lot of good ones.

Or should I start looking into magic add-ons?

I'd say look to add-ons. Destruction pretty much is just elemental sprayer, ball and explosion spells. There may be a bit more variety in the higher tiers, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's too great. Apocalypse Spells is a good place to get quite a few new spells that are distinct from the existing spells.

Yeah, I had started a second playthrough (first was a Stealth Archer build) as a mage, and... it was just kinda dull. I didn't care for the illusion tree, because the whole "will this spell work on this enemy?" thing is kinda annoying. Really, I wish the level of the target either just gave them a resist chance or reduced the duration of the effect, because man is it annoying to walk into a dungeon and find your rage abilities no longer do the trick.

Destruction is of course pretty fun, as is choosing the right tool for the job; taking into account resistances and using electricity on other magic users. But the mana regen was sort've frustrating; I understand it as a game mechanic but it's awfully unsatisfying to twiddle your thumbs for half a fight waiting for more magicka. And you will get tired of those half-dozen spells eventually, and that also means less excitement finding new and shiny weapons and whatnot.

I should go back to that playthrough, though- I just finished the mage's guild quest line. I guess I'll wait until I can get all the DLC, though.

I do appreciate that the whole game seems reasonably (but not completely) ungrind-y; doing some of the same quests over is a bit old as is doing yet another draugr crypt, but I think especially because the main arc is relatively compact that multiple playthroughs aren't as annoying as they are even compared to, say, the relatively similar Fallout: New Vegas.

In compensating for the insane overpoweredness of earlier games they went too far in the other direction. Why they singled out Magic to nerf when Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting are all just as stupid broken as prior games remains a mystery.

They tried to make spells more distinctive rather than being just a single particle effect with the option to explode on target or not. Effect-wise spells in Oblivion and Morrowind had much more flexibility, but they all looked the same. What they did with Skyrim was not so much a nerf as it was incomplete.

In compensating for the insane overpoweredness of earlier games they went too far in the other direction. Why they singled out Magic to nerf when Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting are all just as stupid broken as prior games remains a mystery.

But the mana regen was sort've frustrating; I understand it as a game mechanic but it's awfully unsatisfying to twiddle your thumbs for half a fight waiting for more magicka.

Potions man. They're there for a reason.

I'm sorry, I said I was a mage. As in I dispense the primordial elements from the tips of my fingers, laying waste to my foes; I might- might- be able to hear their cries for mercy under the sound of crackling flesh or shattering bone. My foes are filled with magickal confusion, true panic, and massive stonking shards of ice in that order.

What you seem to have heard is "I am a weak-kneed delicate child, frolicking around the countryside collecting petals and butterfly wings in order to make refreshing herbal infusions in case I seem to have skinned my knee fleeing from a mudcrab or got winded while prancing up a hillside looking for the perfect little mountain flower to complete my lavender-based tisane."

...

Still, point taken. I should've probably invested in more alchemy. It's just soooo boooooorrriing.

So, having played Skyrim for (probably) less than 500 hours on my 360, I am now going to do what I always do and get the GOTY/All the DLC edition* for the PC.

Does anyone know how this runs on a Mid-2011 27” iMac (i5 @ 2.7Ghz and AMD 6770M w/ 4GB of Ram) running Windows? I'm not expecting native resolution, but I'd like it to, well, run.

*- Just to be clear, this hasn't been announced yet AFAIK, but we all know it's coming, right?

Not a direct answer to your question, but it runs (play-ably, at low settings) on an early 2011 macbook pro with an intel HD 3000 and 4 gigs of system ram, so I'm sure it will at least run on your imac.

So RPS brought this to my attention today: Tropical Skyrim (Nexus Link). It looks really neat and really, really different. I might have to clone off a copy of Skyrim to play through with this as my only graphical mod once.

In that video's annotations the player also has a video of a Skywind run through. It's shaping up nicely. They have some more visual work to do as there currently aren't any LODs, it doesn't appear that clothing, armor or weapons are in yet and the landscape has OMG2001 levels of tiling. It looks like it may be coming along a bit faster than Morroblivion did.

So RPS brought this to my attention today: Tropical Skyrim (Nexus Link). It looks really neat and really, really different. I might have to clone off a copy of Skyrim to play through with this as my only graphical mod once.

In that video's annotations the player also has a video of a Skywind run through. It's shaping up nicely. They have some more visual work to do as there currently aren't any LODs, it doesn't appear that clothing, armor or weapons are in yet and the landscape has OMG2001 levels of tiling. It looks like it may be coming along a bit faster than Morroblivion did.

Hey, did anyone else see the tidbit about a new DLC for Skyrim called Redguard? I read on Qt3's forums that it momentarily appeared on Steam for a June something release date and was immediately taken down.

Hey, did anyone else see the tidbit about a new DLC for Skyrim called Redguard? I read on Qt3's forums that it momentarily appeared on Steam for a June something release date and was immediately taken down.

Does anyone know how this runs on a Mid-2011 27” iMac (i5 @ 2.7Ghz and AMD 6770M w/ 4GB of Ram) running Windows? I'm not expecting native resolution, but I'd like it to, well, run.

FWIW, I'm running it under Bootcamp on my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz i7 w/ 1GB AMD 6770M and 8GB RAM, Windows 7 x64, and it runs pretty well. Mind you, I have not installed any of the full on HD texture packs (not even the original one), though I have installed some minor ones (SMIM, a mod that improves the looks of random clutter in tombs, Pure Water for my water mod, High Quality LODs, etc). I don't know if my machine could handle that or not, but the game still looks pretty beautiful to me. Sure, it would look more beautiful, but I don't think my 1GB of vram would take it. Though I couldn't guess at frame-rates (smooth enough for me, but then again, if it's averaging around 30, then I consider that smooth enough ), I run the game just fine at 1680x1050 resolution.

So, that is to say, yeah, you should probably be able to run it just fine and even tweak it to look and play nicer than vanilla.

One thing: I have jumped through the hoops necessary to manually update my AMD drivers, and that has helped in a lot of games. The default Catalyst stuff in bootcamp is way out of date, and updating is not straight-forward because of stupid stuff. But search google about where to get the latest driver package to download (since AMD won't let you download it straight from them) and how to uninstall the drivers included with Bootcamp and install the more up-to-date ones.

Hope this helps.

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STEAL ALL THE THINGS!!!

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Aside: I'm hoping a few more assassins come after my current character. I think I'm going to go ahead and kill Astrid when I meet her (or at least do a save doing that, and then revert, so I can do the Dark Brotherhood quests), and when I do, I want to litter those contracts over her dead body.

Does anyone know how this runs on a Mid-2011 27” iMac (i5 @ 2.7Ghz and AMD 6770M w/ 4GB of Ram) running Windows? I'm not expecting native resolution, but I'd like it to, well, run.

I originally ran it on a 1.3Ghz C2D laptop with a 9800M. Vanilla it got between 20 and 30 FPS (with mipmapskip=1). With SkyrimHD-Lite and W.A.T.E.R. it would end up running around 15-25 FPS (again with mipmapskip=1). You should be able to hit 30, probably even with SkyrimHD-Lite installed.

Interactive Civilian wrote:

I have not installed any of the full on HD texture packs (not even the original one), though I have installed some minor ones (SMIM, a mod that improves the looks of random clutter in tombs, Pure Water for my water mod, High Quality LODs, etc). I don't know if my machine could handle that or not, but the game still looks pretty beautiful to me.

You should have no problem with SkyrimHD-Lite. Even if you have to use mipmapskip=1 most of the textures will still be higher res than the default.

I am a compulsive searcher, and this saves me so much time that I used to waste going through all the urns. However, it has caused me a problem or two on quests where it looted an item I was supposed to pick up, so I couldn't pick it up to continue.

I also started a new game as a sneaky assassin in heavy armor. The only reason for the heavy armor was I played in light armor last time and I wanted to see what new heavy armors were in the mods I am running. (I think I have every armor and weapon mod from the GEM list.) I have become really good at sneaking around and killing everyone in one hit, but I am so good at sneaking that I have hit level 52 with only a 40 in heavy armor and something like 55 in one handed. I just can't fight leveled enemies face to face without just burning through potions (which I can afford to do a little bit). I waited till after I finished a lot of quests to start the main quest and dragons are just plain terrifying to me right now because I just can't sneak up on them. So I have Rayya following me around all the time outside to protect the Dragonborn from big scary dragons, and as soon as I find a dungeon or building with humans in it I have to tell her to stop and wait outside while I go in and slit everyones throat.

The nice thing is that the sneaky style really changes the game, and the interior lighting mod really makes it seem less ridiculous to hide in the shadows. Before the mod, it was just silly that they couldn't see me, now at least it seems plausible.

I am a compulsive searcher, and this saves me so much time that I used to waste going through all the urns. However, it has caused me a problem or two on quests where it looted an item I was supposed to pick up, so I couldn't pick it up to continue.

Just out of curiosity, can you drop the item and then pick it up in order to continue?

The mother of my children is really loving this game.. She is out and about tonight.. I was thinking of putting some nude mods on there.. I would just say, I have no idea where those came from.Those fuckers that make that game must be sick in the head.

But I think she would just beat the hell out of me.

I could care less about nude mods.. I am 38 years old.I just like being a bastard.

sorry for ranting and raving.. fuck, I am getting pathetic in my old age!

I am a compulsive searcher, and this saves me so much time that I used to waste going through all the urns. However, it has caused me a problem or two on quests where it looted an item I was supposed to pick up, so I couldn't pick it up to continue.

Just out of curiosity, can you drop the item and then pick it up in order to continue?

Unless it's marked as a quest item that should trigger the quest script that's on those items.

Can't wait to get home and play tonight. Spent last night downloading ALL THE MODS! (well, not really, but I did kind of go overboard.) Should be fun to see if things will behave together. I think I'm up to ~100 mods now, the majority of which being graphical enhancements.

I am a compulsive searcher, and this saves me so much time that I used to waste going through all the urns. However, it has caused me a problem or two on quests where it looted an item I was supposed to pick up, so I couldn't pick it up to continue.

Just out of curiosity, can you drop the item and then pick it up in order to continue?

Unless it's marked as a quest item that should trigger the quest script that's on those items.

I don't know, I just reloaded and paused it. One time was the dawnstar quest, the script looted the soul crystal that I needed to pick up to drop the "shield." I dont think I could have dropped another soul crystal to trigger it.

The pause key is also critical for player housing because I am a compulsive packrat. If I walk by my alchemical storage it picks up all the components and they weigh over 500 total now.

Pretty SOP for Oblivion. Install it, spend a few hours modding it. Play for fifteen minutes after you get out of the sewers. Happened to me on more than a few occasions.

That's because Oblivion was their first game that scaled with the player and you could see right off the bat that there were several things that didn't make sense. After that game they learned their lesson and none of the ones they've released since have needed nearly the same number of mods.